I briefly had an obsession with the British guy from Grease 2, daydreaming of him singing catchy musical theatre numbers to me in the same manner he had to Michelle Pfeiffer in the movie that seemed to be endlessly playing after Teen Witch on TBS. Then, one Saturday afternoon, bored with my favorite number from Grease 2 (“Let’s Bowl, Let’s Bowl, Let’s Rock ’n’ Roll”), I changed the channel to MTV.
Music videos were responsible for many of my fashion choices, catchphrases, and dreams. After I saw Lita Ford slide across the floor in her ripped jeans in the “Kiss Me Deadly” video I took a pair of left-handed scissors to my Lee Relaxed Fit Extra-Long Riders and tore those bad boys up. After Michael Jackson made choreographed all-male jazz dancing look tough I longed to have an occasion to yell in someone’s face “You ain’t bad, you ain’t nothin’!” After seeing Jon Bon Jovi pop out of a moving platform beneath the floor to uproarious applause in the “Lay Your Hands on Me” video I wanted to someday matter that much to a crowd of hair-sprayed fans.
Music videos were essential companions to hit songs and were imperative to stay abreast of if you wanted to avoid becoming a total loser (which I was well on my way to being). Often, at school, Amanda would talk about the latest Richard Marx video, while a gaggle of girls crowded around listening as if she had the key to life. I had no idea who Richard Marx was or what songs he sang. I pretended I did, though, nodding my head and agreeing that “Hold On to the Nights” was a far superior song to “Right Here Waiting” even though I had never heard either song. They sounded pretty lame to me, in comparison to sexy rock hits like “Kiss Me Deadly.”
As a preteen trapped in a high schooler’s body, my little-girl mind was continuously being sent confusing oversexed messages. For example, after I saw the music video for Warrant’s “Cherry Pie,” I thought sex involved baked goods being dropped in one’s crotch. I knew I had to be wrong, but I was scared to ask anyone about it. And who could I ask? My brother was too involved in creating a detailed spreadsheet of our home movie collection, Dad was always working, and my mom would love that I was opening up to her so much she would try to have “that talk” with me every day over high tea. Amanda seemed to have all the answers, but admitting to her that I did not know anything would majorly take me down a few notches in her eyes. Amanda was already a bit out of my league friend-wise and I couldn’t risk losing her. So instead I let all the stimuli around me run wild in my mind, turning to no one for answers and coming to my own deranged childish answers. For example, I believed oral sex was talking about sex on the phone. Oral hygiene meant a clean mouth, so why wouldn’t oral sex mean talking dirty on the telephone? I’ll never forget years later being humiliated while on the phone with an overly wise boy from class. “Do you even know what oral sex is?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “we’re having it right now.”
Then, one particular Saturday, as I was watching MTV and folding socks, a man came on the screen and changed my life. I certainly did not want him to be my boyfriend. I had no desire to go on a romantic date with him; I didn’t want to make out with him under a maple tree. For the first time in my life I wanted to do dirty, dirty things with a man and not speak to him afterward. I wanted to do them with R&B singer Bobby Brown. This was when Bobby Brown was just a cute guy in Hammer pants singing R&B songs in an attempt to launch a solo career post–New Edition. This was a glorious time for Bobby.
Watching Bobby Brown’s low-budget video for the post–“My Prerogative” sleeper hit “Roni” for the first time in my life, my pants got wet and it was not due to peeing. The video was entirely made up of blurry, live-concert, low-budget footage edited together and filled with Bobby’s oversexed antics, including lambada-ing before that was a thing and a lot of pounding on his sweaty hairless chest as he sang this forgettable R&B song. Bobby stood onstage shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of satin, royal-blue parachute pants. This was hot with a capital H, and the wet feeling down below was a shockingly titillating feeling that I would have paid more attention to had I not been completely mesmerized by this young man’s pajama pants and huge swinging wiener. I almost cried when he crawled across the stage on all fours with his tongue hanging out like a rabid dog. He was just stinking of sex! When he stood on the giant speakers during the song’s breakdown clapping his hands, I just knew I needed to one day lose my virginity to him. The man who once sang “Cool It Now” would now become my secret lover.
A few years before “Roni” debuted, Bruce Springsteen had brought Courtney Cox (another cute brunette) onstage in the “Dancing in the Dark” video, and every girl in my school fantasized about one day having the opportunity to step touch repeat with the Boss. But Bobby took the audience volunteer pas de deux to a whole new level. The chick Bobby chose to dance with was certainly not an actress who had been planted in the audience and would soon be cast in Must See TV shows like Family Ties and Friends. Bobby’s choice of a lucky audience member to rub up against could best be described as an attainable woman, which I felt meant I had a chance with this filthy, gap-toothed boy. This woman was wearing little makeup and sported an unfortunate-looking pageboy. She was a little overweight and had virtually no rhythm. Bobby had to ask her to remove her jacket and then a cardigan to reveal an olive-green turtleneck.
She was my hero. My hero in a turtleneck. I wanted to be her.
Then again, my height was constantly making people think I was older than I was. The local movie theatre manager never wanted to let me in at the children’s rate, even though he was also the assistant principal of my school. When I handed in my paperwork to quit gymnastics classes (for obvious height reasons) the girl behind the desk said, “Aren’t you that girl always hanging out with girls so much younger than you?” So maybe I had a chance to be Bobby’s next victim. Perhaps if I could get tickets to Bobby’s next show at the Garden State Arts Center, I could achieve my dream of rubbing my pelvis against a man with a Gumby haircut. If only my mom would let me go!
In the meantime, I would sit in front of MTV for hours, suffering patiently through crappy Milli Vanilli videos, various Paula Abdul atrocities, and unsexy Roxette ballads just waiting for Bobby Brown and his swinging big dick to come back and create that unexplainable feeling in my slightly irregular underwear bought in bulk at the Hanes outlet.
I went through a brief religious phase around this time, wearing a green stone cross I had purchased at a local flea market. My mother told me it might put off my father, raised Jewish but now an atheist, but otherwise she thought it was “very pretty.” I stroked my green $2 cross fervently while praying to God that “Roni” would come on. Please, please, please make this next video Roni, God. I will do anything you ask of me; I’ll even eat a few bites of the next batch of Yorkshire pudding. I’ll even put my dad’s tighty-whities away in his dresser after folding them. Just make the next video “Roni.” My prayers never worked. Unfortunately, “Roni” had not reached the same level of rotation as “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” a song and video about as sexy as the “Top That” rap from Teen Witch.
My absolute favorite part of the “Roni” music video was when Bobby snapped open the waistband of his pants and swirled around in slow motion looking down at his crotch. I had no idea of the true implications of his choreography—that he was looking at his own erection as he did this. I had no clue he was snapping his pants to check that he was absolutely ready to sleep with whoever was closest the second he stepped offstage. And I somehow missed the enormous outline of his donkey dick showing through the sateen of his Hammer pants. I thought the snapping open of one’s pants while twirling your pelvis was a new dance craze and I should practice it at home for the next school dance.
My body was developing at such a rapid pace I didn’t completely understand these erotic desires Bobby Brown was expressing onstage. Although I was tall, I didn’t have big boobs like the girls in Bobby’s audience crying at his onstage magic. If I was growing body hair, it wasn’t noticeable. My mom and dad’s genes combined ha
d given me ultrablonde body hair. I had even inherited what I referred to as “clear eyebrows,” which were the exact opposite of the sexy Brooke Shields or Cindy Crawford dark, brooding brow. My eyebrows most closely resembled those of an albino’s, which was true of the rest of my body hair, making it virtually invisible. I understood the value of not having to spend endless dollars on waxing and various other hair-removal treatments, but every time we had “health” class, I learned that growing body hair was a sign of puberty. Being very tall with no boobs and what appeared to be no body hair was very confusing.
None of my health teachers discussed what might happen down below when watching a Bobby Brown music video. From what I had learned so far, sex was about periods, AIDS, and poorly made birthing videos. No one had mentioned big schlongs in loose pants or damp undies while watching MTV. More than a little lost, I figured it would be best to just learn Bobby’s erotic choreography myself and take it from there.
First I needed to find the right environment to practice the twirling penis dance move. We had mirrors in my house in private places like bathrooms and bedrooms, but I preferred the kitchen oven. In my house our oven was installed about halfway up in the wall. An average-size child could perhaps see a reflection of his or her face, but because I was so tall, I could see a perfect reflection of my midsection. Soon, the oven door became a secret mirror where I could dance dirty with myself while no one was looking. I would practice the “snap waistband/twirl pelvis/look at my dick” move over and over, carefully observing my reflection in the oven door. The isolation of just the pelvic area being visible in the oven door made the dance extra erotic, like a peep show where I was both the star and the audience. My unneutered dog, sensing the air of sex in the room, would join in on the action by humping my rejected Popple.
One afternoon, while staring at my midsection in the oven and practicing the “Roni” snap over and over again, judging if I had completely mastered the art of looking at my own “dick” or if I needed more work on the pelvis-swirl part, I looked up and saw my older brother standing in the doorway. He was watching me with horror. I had no idea how long he had been there, but I knew he had seen enough.
“Margot, what are you doing?” he asked, staring at me with disgust and a slight twinge of fear.
What was I doing? Well, I was thrusting my hips and staring at my denim-clad crotch in the oven door. I could say I was just dancing, but how would I explain why I was looking down my pants? My dancing certainly had progressed from juvenile grinding to Chaka Khan’s “I Feel for You” to controlled eroticism for which I am still thankful for the oven door. But how could I explain this type of personal progress to my teenage brother? Lucky for me, he didn’t have his “borrowed” camcorder out, capturing this disaster for all eternity. Still, surely he had seen the “Roni” video—maybe if I just laid it all out there, he would understand. I mean, everyone watched MTV all the time, right? Except I had never actually seen Greg watch MTV; he was always too busy reading, doing his schoolwork, or building his VHS collection of classic movies taped off the Turner Classic Movies channel.
Finally I just told him the truth. “I’m practicing my ‘Roni’ dance.” And in lieu of asking further questions, my brother walked away, shaking his head but letting it go. Maybe he had never seen the video for “Roni” and didn’t understand. Or maybe he had seen the video for “Roni” and needed no further explanation. I didn’t care; I just prayed he wouldn’t tell my parents or his friends. Maybe my little green stone cross had the power to make this prayer actually work.
Soon after, I bought Bobby’s album Don’t Be Cruel on cassette at Nickels so I could listen to “Roni” at my leisure, now doing the dance in the privacy of my bedroom, rewinding it over and over again, twisting and grinding to the best song ever. I didn’t care that this was not a hit song for Bobby Brown. For me, it was #1.
To a twelve-year-old girl, everything about Bobby Brown embodied sex. His moves, his lips, his lyrics. He even performed that infamous, hungry Madonna “Express Yourself” crawl before Madonna herself did it. I was amazed by how a simple, one-camera, cheaply made live video of one young sexy man singing a so-so song could evoke such a strong chemical reaction. Judging by the quality of the video, I was sure it was taped on one of those camcorders you had to strap to your chest along with the VCR—you know, the original “portable” camcorders that the proudest dads invested in only to be outdated five minutes later by something that was actually portable? Amanda’s family had one of those, and I was always jealous of their ability to record the happier moments of life and rewatch them later to revel in how amazingly well everything was going for them.
Bobby also had a good life in my mind. He was touring the country singing hot songs and filming it all. He was almost subtle in his seduction, not like those manufactured man-girls from Milli Vanilli, who I believed were an insult to my womanhood. I thought Bobby was about as sexy as it could get. There would never be a hotter man; there would never be a hotter song; never would I ever again feel the way Bobby Brown made me feel. After years of having trouble sleeping, I would now look forward to going to sleep so I could lie in bed and dream about dancing with Bobby myself, alone, while wearing a turtleneck. The idea that something so sexy was humanly possible made me feel alive and invigorated to start my next day.
Then, one afternoon, while I watched MTV and stroked my green stone cross, praying to God that “Roni” would come on, a new video for Bobby Brown’s song “Every Little Step” premiered. Bobby and the dancers wore matching black-and-white costumes, not Hammer pants and Costco turtlenecks. The video looked professionally recorded and was precisely choreographed. Bobby no longer was allowed to run around onstage freestyling his own dance moves. Someone had started controlling his sexiness.
But I still knew what lay beneath. I decided that Bobby was probably dating the backup dancer on the right because I thought she was the prettiest. She was a thin, light-skinned black girl with long black hair and a killer strut. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Move over Laverne and Carol Burnett, there was a new tall woman to emulate and her name was Tanya. I didn’t actually know her name was Tanya—there was no Google at the time—so I created a name for her and hoped that Bobby was with her. Perhaps in a few years when I grew into my frame, I could look like that too. Maybe I could have a career as a Bobby Brown backup dancer. After all, I had worked very hard at mastering the nuance of his choreography in my oven door.
Every time this video came on, which was much more frequently than “Roni,” I found myself watching Tanya more than Bobby. Whereas with “Roni” I was mesmerized by Bobby’s allure, in “Every Little Step,” Tanya stole the show. Because I found Tanya to be so beautiful, I assumed that I must now be a lesbian. Why else would I be so enthralled with her? Tanya wore above-the-knee black boots and had long curly hair that looked like a darker version of Whitney Houston’s desirable locks in the “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” video. She wore a skintight black Lycra dress that accentuated all the right parts of her body in a way that my unitards for modern dance class never did. There was no other possible scenario beyond sheer lesbianism to explain my attraction to Tanya. I would come out to my parents when the time was right and would hope for their blessing. My mother would be initially concerned about how I would be able to reproduce in a girl/girl relationship, but I would assure her that love between two women means twice the uteri and my lesbian partner and I would find a way to bear her grandchildren. Being a lesbian was fine with me; it seemed like a cool artsy thing to do. Even Madonna was sometimes gay, and she was on top of the world. Plus, my parents had forced me to watch a movie a few weekends before called I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, and Alice was lesbians with Gertrude Stein. Gertrude was a cool depressed author, which was another possible career option for me if dirty backup Bobby Brown dancer didn’t pan out. Even though being a lesbian seemed very exciting to me, I was sad because I had to now break up with Bobby. Well, more like break up w
ith the video for “Roni.”
I began fantasizing about Tanya while lying in bed, sleeplessly wondering how I would phrase my coming out to my parents. I imagined Tanya teaching me her sexy strut, instructing me how to properly strap up my thigh-high boots, and helping me develop my repertoire of booty-shaking dance routines to Bobby’s latest musical masterpiece. I was sure that what I had for Tanya was love and love only, but I needed to be sure I was truly full-force gay, or at least bisexual, a word I’d learned from my surrogate “big sis,” Madonna. After all, just a month before I was certain I wanted to rub my crotch against Bobby’s groin while he sang slow jams to me. Maybe I didn’t truly love Tanya in that way.
So I decided to try out my “I’m probably a lesbian” theory on a friend of mine. I use the term friend loosely. She was more like the smartest girl in my class who was always placed in a higher small group than me. My teachers would always vaguely describe the groups under names like the leopards, the reindeer, and the turtles. I may have been just a reindeer but I was smart enough to know I didn’t want to be a turtle. This girl was most certainly a leopard. She had always worn glasses and had braces and wore her hair in a bun. Then one day she got contacts, grew boobs, got her braces off, and let down her hair. It turned out she had beautiful long, silky hair that looked like the ladies on the covers of romance novels in the magazine aisle of ShopRite. I could imagine her swinging her mane in slow motion while romantic music played during a beachside love scene. She looked like the “after” pictures in the copies of Cosmo I would sneak off and read after my grandmother would fall asleep on her chaise lounge clutching her martini in one hand and dangling a lit cigarette in the other. Surely with that hair this girl had a better understanding of sex than I did and would be open to making out with a tall girl with clear eyebrows. Maybe she would think my invisible eyebrows were mysterious, like Mona Lisa’s.
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